Feeling Wild

When I began reading Meyers' End of the Wild, I was pleasantly suprised to see that when discussing the Earth's decreasing numbers of true wildlife preserves, the Monteverde Cloud Forest was on his list as a precious resource. I had the great fortune of traveling to Costa Rica in high school, and had a spectacular time wandering through the cloud forest. It was the closest I've been to seeing a tropical rainforest. I have yet to see the immense biological diversity of places like the Amazon, so being in Monteverde was a thrilling experience. I was astounded with the thickness of the forest and the variety of its small inhabitants. While I wasnt lucky enough to see some of the forest's more exciting or famous animals like the quetzal, I was still very impressed with the grand amount of life that existed there. The plants and trees were unlike anything I had ever seen, and the small insects and amphibians were a marvel. Therefore, I was pretty upset to read in Meyers' book that the preserve, like many of its kind, is being severely threatened by human activity within and around its borders.
Meyers made a very compelling case for the ineffectiveness of wildlife preserves. His theory reminds me of the phrase we refer to often in this class, that 'the earth is one, but the world is not'. We have created false wildernesses under the assumption that within their borders, they can survive perfectly without any interference from the outside world. Globalization and climate change are drastically increasing the effects of human activity on the remote parts of the world, and it is pholly of us to believe that drawing imaginary borders around certain forests will protect them from our ever reaching hand.
I want desperately to believe that we can change our ways and reverse our damage to the natural environment and biological diversity. However, I think we are indeed too little, too late. Our presence exists everywhere, and no one seems to care enough to change that. In my opinion, the way out of this path is to begin challenging the widely held idea that humans are a superior force on earth. Organized religion and cultural beliefs that are deeply entrenched in our values systems have led us to believe that we have a right as so-called 'sentient beings' to take advantage of the earth's systems and behave in the way that we please. If we ever hope to return to natural selection, instead of human selection, we have to understand that our place in the global ecosytem is no more valuable than that of an ant or a fern. Ignoring the planet's immense species diversity in the name of superiority is a downright criminal act. We should act now to reverse this ideology, and begin promoting the wilderness around us.